The Curve of a Lip
by Leroy J
Summary: "One fact. All from the past. The most important thing. It hibernated in his brain like a parasite- eating little sections of his memory. What if he couldn't remember the gentle scoop of her top lip?" Gibbs angst. Mentions of Shannon/Kelly. 1shot


******Title: The Curve of a Lip**

**Rating: K+**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Leroy Jethro Gibbs. I wish. He'd teach me so much.**

**Summary: "_One fact. All from the past. The most important thing. It hibernated in his brain like a parasite eating little sections of his memory. What if he couldn't remember the gentle scoop of her top lip?" Gibbs angst. Mentions of Shannon/Kelly._**

**__**_Hi, all! I decided I'm a big jerk because it's so very hard for me to update my chapter fics. I felt bad and I had to write, I had to. I wanted to write one character only and that was Leroy Jethro Gibbs._ Disclaimer for everyone: Gibbs isn't easy to write. My philosophy was that he doesn't talk much, but that certainly doesn't mean his inner thoughts are quiet too. In other words, first Gibbs attempt. So if anyone reads this, you'll be so kind to comment and keep this poor college student alive?

* * *

><p><strong>The<strong>** Curve of a Lip**

The air had the sting of cold, yet the rain that cascaded from the sky was tricky. Warm. It fell onto his open palms, into his eyes, down his cheek. Warm, sticky against his skin like blood. Rain was blood.

He stood on the last step of his porch. He did not remember why he came out into the rain. The last he knew he was on his couch, looking into a phantom area past the wall. It was ridiculous, he knew. There wasn't anything on the other side of it. Some plumbing pipes, electrical wire he fixed last month. Dust. No termites. Not in his house.

One fact. All from the past. The most important thing. It hibernated in his brain like a parasite eating little sections of his memory. What if he couldn't remember the gentle scoop of her top lip?

Images of her laughing. Her teeth just slightly peeking through the sunny bright of her giggle. It was the first thing Jethro thought about in the morning. His eyes pulled from a sleepy death, he tragically wondered if she was still sleeping next to him.

He cursed to no one. She was sleeping. She had always been sleeping.

She was not here. She will never be here again.

The sky alit with particles of energy as a crack mocked him across the sky. His mind felt like the thunderstorms of fall. No sense of them. The weatherman himself could never guess when the lightning would take a power line, a tree. Nobody knew that.

His face crinkled. He was thinking about idiotic things.

A picture of a handmade icing job of a cake. Her name iced in cautious, though nearly illegible letters. The H and two Ns were too big for the rest of the letters. He told the little girl it was perfect. He kissed her forehead and got a smear of icing in her brown bangs.

Jethro wondered if he should have tried baking a cake. A cake that could never say what it needed to; what he wanted it to. He squeezed his hands together, fingertips becoming numb from the sheets. The sheets of water that stuck to his body like blood.

He suddenly remembered that he couldn't bake a cake to save his life. His mind zipped to an image of an old instant batter box in the back of his nearly empty cabinet. Jethro grinned, he had a box. He wondered if that was a little something to soothe the rash in his gut.

It was definitely expired. There was an open box of baking powder in the cabinet too.

A roll of thunder and his heart vibrated along. The insignificant hairs on his arms reached toward the sky.

Then he fell. He fell to the bottom step. He rested in a puddle all gathered in the middle scoop of a step that had greeted feet over a span of years.

He left the front door open. Why did he do that?

What were tears, what was rain? There was no difference. God pitied him. Crying for him because he could not cry. How did he have the luxury, the option to do so? These were tears of blood…

From God himself.

"You took her from me." He began. God was not intimidated by Leroy Gibbs.

"You could have taken me. All of your wasted opportunities." He stared into the sky. A black rippling abyss of spirit, of power.

God answered back to him.

_I should take you._

"I have empty cabinets. An expired baking mix. Red Velvet cake. I don't even eat Red _Velevet._"

Was God as pitiful toward him now as he was the day they were taken? Did He see him now, sitting in a puddle in his soaked old Levi's, mixing tears and rain on the bottom step of his porch?

Jethro decided no power would grant him the moment of utter pity. For everyone's sake. No man in power would wish to see a break as this. A man who kept an expired cake mix next to his baking powder.

He thought about getting up now. His tears were done. No more would come, even if he wished more than anything they would. This had been one in a many moments.

Her lips. A flash of a light. Himself turning around to see purple letters made of sugary confectionary syrup, the little girl with his eyes. Why were they his? Icing was in her bangs. He didn't mean to transfer that to her during a light kiss. He wanted to be angry at himself for it. The little one had a camera with a winding gear too loud; she snapped a photo of himself and his Shannon.

They kissed in front of the silly cake. He recalled laughing. Was he laughing? He must have been laughing too. He hid her small gift on the top shelf, right corner, wrapped in three grocery bags. She never found it. Even when the little girl's hats were up there.

She never found it.

He was sure that if he closed his dripping eyes long enough, he could remember what her lips looked like when they said, "thank you. I never guessed you'd be so crafty." Light sarcasm tickled his insides.

Her C sounded so much like a proper K. He mouthed crafty to himself and his lips could not be hers.

"I know you didn't take Shannon and Kelly from me. What power would have hand in that? What _God_ would?" he stopped, his hands gripped the banister of his porch; squeezing with no effort.

"I took them from myself."

His socks were so wet. He left footprints upon his floor as he went toward the basement's opening, its mouth open wide like a hungry, merciful beast.

* * *

><p><strong>I had this shorthand style of writing in mind for him. I don't know why, I just felt it appropriate.<strong>

Leave me cookies and money for my school books? No...

Okay.

xoxo

~Cassie


End file.
